Undertaking seagrass restoration for Sustainable Shellfish and drafting a management plan action guideline for seagrass restoration
Objective 1: To quantify the use value of seagrass meadows, namely invertebrate fisheries in two selected locations: Maputo and Inhambane Bays.
Objective 2: To widely describe the role of this fishery in the wellbeing of the communities by means of surveying availability of edible clams and snails, revenues and key actors involved in this fishery and document value chains to communities and related business such as markets and tourism.
Objective 3: To undertake a seagrass restoration in seagrass-degraded sites as documented and published for Maputo and identify possible restoration sites in Inhambane Bay and begin a pilot restoration program.
Objective 4: To document key good practices of invertebrate fisheries also seagrass conservation and specifically role of woman as generators of household income generating derived from seagrass invertebrate fisheries.
Objective 5: To draft a management action plan for seagrass meadows for Maputo Bay and add a seagrass component to the existing management plan for Inhambane Bay Community Conservation Network.
Seagrass meadows play a significant role in providing ecosystem services, including food and habitat for marine organisms (shellfish and finfish), as well as many important services to local communities in Maputo Bay (MB) and Inhambane Bay (IB), in southern Mozambique. For instance, in western MB more than 300 people, mostly women, assemble daily within seagrass dominated intertidal areas to harvest clams and other invertebrates for their basic livelihoods. However, in both sites, seagrass meadows have been threatened by anthropogenic pressures (e.g. use of destructive fishing gears) and natural causes (cyclones, flooding and related sedimentation) leading to an increasing loss of seagrass meadows. Nonetheless, effective conservation and restoration efforts of seagrass in MB and IB are still limited, given a lack of information and a need for awareness about the link between seagrass, fisheries and community well-being.
This project intends to establish a seagrass plan of action that would deliver ecological, economic and socio-anthropological information on invertebrate fisheries and engage the local community in good practices for seagrass restoration and conservation. It will further assist in the implementation of national agendas (e.g the 2017 Marine Policy and Fisheries Law and Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) entailing blue carbon management and fisheries sustainability) and global agendas such as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.2 highlighting restoration initiatives to achieve healthy and productive oceans. Therefore, in order to achieve these objectives, the Eduardo Mondlane University (Department do Biological Sciences and Faculty of Arts Social Science), together with NGOs/CSOs and Municipalities will collaborate to develop an integrated knowledge of seagrass resources, ecosystem management and restoration practices in Maputo Bay and Inhambane Bay. The project specifically seeks to (i) document invertebrate fisheries, their use value; ii) document value chain of the invertebrate fisheries to communities; iii) undertake key good practices for seagrass restoration in MB and IB based on standard sediment (plug, sod) and sediment free (staple, rod) restoration methods.
The project is designed to directly benefit seagrass invertebrate fisheries gleaners, researchers and students. Indirectly, it will benefit the municipalities and government, private consultancies, NGOs and CSOs, and society in general. Moreover, the project implementation will take in consideration ethics and human rights, as well as incorporate and mainstream gender issues.
